Homeschool Kindergarten Lesson Plans - Week 9 {and Halloween!}

 

This was a fun and laid back Homeschool Kindergarten / Pre-K week for us.  I tried to make most of our activities centered around the Halloween theme to give the girls something special to get excited about.  Here's what we did:



Math

In Math, we're still working on addition and subtraction facts, skip counting, and composing/decomposing 10.

 I discovered that we own a dozen pairs of matching spider figures (in a collection of toy insects), and promptly turned them into a Halloween-themed math game.  We had to see who could find the most pairs of spiders and then counted them by 2s.  We also made up word problems using the spiders.

 The girls went crazy over the Halloween stickers that I had picked up for $1 at Target.  They made lots of 'spooky scenes' to hang all over the house.  I took the opportunity to ask them some math questions ("Are there more pumpkins or stars?  If each witch had her own cat how many cats would there be?", etc..)

My favorite memory of the week was when I was sitting in bed reading magazines with E (while L and H were napping) and E asked if she could "do math".  I didn't feel like getting out of the cozy bed, so I made up some word problems for her (how many human legs in the family, how many dog legs in the family).  She knew that to solve the problem she would have to count by 2s.  Then we talked about how we knew if the final number was odd or even, and that somehow grew into a discussion on how many points define a plane (actually we talked about the minimum number of legs a chair needs in order to not fall over).  It was so neat to cuddle next to my cutie girl and watch her brain at work solving problems.

Language Arts

For real-aloud chapter books, we finished Little Witch by Anna Elizabeth Bennet, which was a hit with everyone (even E who pretends that she doesn't like to listen to me read aloud).  We started The Witch Family by Eleanor Estes.  So far this one looks like it will be a favorite as well - the story is about two girls who draw and make up a story about Witches, so my girls can relate (they are constantly drawing and 'playing stories' ).  L is always highly engaged in real aloud books.  E is really interested in spelling everything, so she is quite intrigued by Malachi the spelling bumblebee and calls out the words as Malachi spells them out.

Reading Log (Independent Reading):

Room on the Broom
The Witch Who Was Afraid of Witches (with help)
Ben and Becky in the Haunted House
The Princess and the Frog
Two Greedy Bears
The Cat in the Hat
Green Eggs and Ham

 The kids enjoyed matching up little buttons in different shapes to words.  When they were done, they got to make necklaces with their buttons (using real needles to do the threading).

Another fun reading game that we play every once in a while is labeling the house using sticky notes.  I place the sticky notes on the counter, the girls grab one at a time, read it and stick it on the correct object in the house.  The funny part of this game is that we always seem to forget some of the labels when cleaning up and then later in the day I end up finding sticky notes in strange places (like opening up the cupboard and finding that my dishes have been labeled).

Misc. Halloween Fun

These paper towel ghosts were a big hit with the girls.  They made them into their "baby ghosts" and created all sorts of stories around them.

 E helped me make some Halloween Jell-o Jigglers.  At first I was wondering whether it was a good idea to make a sweet treat for a holiday where the kids would already be getting more candy than they could handle, but it actually turned out pretty well.  After their Halloween candy was safely stashed away in the pantry, whenever the kids ask for their candy, I've been giving them Jello instead.

Next year we'll be using the molds for making some seasonal soap instead. 

The girls went Trick-or-Treating for the first time at the mall.  They were the only kids there that looked like they had raided the costume box (which is exactly what they did as they picked out crowns, tutus, and fairy wings from our collection of dress-up clothes), and they had a great time.  I was so proud of how they always said "thank you" after receiving candy.